Mina Miradova

Five years after his slaying, the murder of prominent Azerbaijani journalist Elmar Huseynov remains unsolved, as well as shrouded in controversy. An ongoing criminal case involving a journalist who was investigating Huseynov's death is providing new fuel for debate about the unsolved murder.

A draft law on dropping Russian endings from Azeri last names is fueling debate in Azerbaijan about how best to define the country's national identity.

As elsewhere in the South Caucasus, Russia's cultural influence has been receding rapidly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Azerbaijan, that change coincides with the country's emergence as a regional energy power.

A member of parliament in Azerbaijan has proposed ditching the International Women's Day holiday on March 8 and replacing it with a celebration of the April 28 birthday of President Ilham Aliyev's late mother. The proposed change is stoking fresh debate about the Aliyev family's place in Azerbaijani society.

Azerbaijan's election officials are betting on 500 webcams installed in polling stations for the country's December 23 municipal elections to reassure wary voters that the elections are a clean and fair vote. Some election monitors, however, worry that the technology merely facilitates government scrutiny of voter preferences.

A governing party politician's proposal to postpone Azerbaijan's 2010 parliamentary elections "until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved" has met with both support and censure from President Ilham Aliyev's Yeni Azerbaijan Party.